Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-02-05
TROPICAL FEMALE BEAUTY.
FAIR MEXICANS OF VARIOUS
CLASSES AND Castles.
Mexican Women as Soldiers, as Pat
riarchs, as Farmers and as
Wives for Foreigners.
Especial Correspondence REcoED-UMoN.l

Especial Correspondence REcoRD-uNIoN.l
MEXICO, January %, 1887.
Long before the appearance OF Darwin's
selective theory, Herbert Spencer admir-
ably remarked The saying that beauty
is but skin-deep is in itself but skin-deep
saying" The beauty of race is to be con-
sidered for other things than merely pleas
ing the eye, and there can be no doubt that
the most successful nations of the earth
owe much of the physical and mental
strength that made them so to their hand
some and well-formed mothers.
On first arriving here from the
North where really ugly woman
is the rara avi), ones first i'm
preston is that of intense disap-
pointment, so far as female beauty is con-
cerned, and belief that the dark-eyed
daughters of old Castillo" of whom we
have heard so much, are all dead as the
daughters of MonteZuma. To our ideas
there can be little beauty inseparable from
color and graceful contour. The brilliant
complexion and fine figure of an English
woman strike every beholder; the spiritttelLe
expression and finely-chiselled features of
a Spaniard steal upon the senses like
soft moonlight; while Frenchwoman,
however plain her face may be, has so
graceful a manner of saying agreeable
things, so charming t0ur1ure and piquant
way of managing her eyes and mouth, that
we think her beauty after half an hour
acquaintance.
In Mexico it is only by degrees that
handsome faces begin to dawn upon us.
The beauty of these women consists in
SUPERB BLACK EYES,
Very fine dark hair, small feet and prettily-
shaped hands and arms. Their chief de-
fects are that they are frequently short and
fat almost invariably being mountains of
flesh at 40); their teeth are often bad
partly, no doubt. because there are few good
dentists in Mexico-and their compilations
are neither the clear olive of the Spaniard,
nor the glowing brown of the Italian, but
a muddy, bilious-looking yellow. Worse
than all this their dressing is execrable,
and from lack of corsets, or some defect in
nature or the modesto their figures have
usually an indescribably.s louchy look-the
graceless contour of "a meal bag tied in
the middle" Their notion OF squeezing
the foot into shoe half an inch too short.
and always with an enormously high heel
directly under the instep, soon ruins the
foot and destroys all grace of carriage.
The handsomest women in Mexico are
not found at the Capital, but-as in Spain,
1t is said that none of the beauties of
Madrid were born there-the tall and
graceful bellies here, distinguished for clear
compilations and fine teeth. come from
Jalapa, Vera Cruz, Puebla and Guadalajara.
Among the lower classes. however, one
occasionally sees face and figure so lovely
that we may suppose Just such another was
Donna Marina, Cortez' enchantress-with
hair and eyes of extraordinary beauty. teeth
like pearls, complexion dark but glowing.
tiny feet, and hands and arms whose ex-
quisIte shape neither sun nor toll can in
jure. In these rare cases it is more than
likely that, though Indian in appearance,
there were intermarriages in former DAYS
between her progeniJ )rs and descendants of
the Spanish conquerors.
SOME OF THE FINEsr-LooKING WOMEN
In Mexico, both in form and feature. are
found among the civilized Indians. While
Mexican ladies of high caste live in luxu-
rious ease, seldom walking at all-and at
forty-tive are shrivelled, decrepid and use
less, the Aztec females lowing to outdoor
life and laborious habits are strong and
active at seventy years of age. True, they
wrinkle at middle-life, till their faces at
fifty resemble dried figs-but that is the
inevitable effect of tropical winds and early
maturity. There is no country III the
world where, according to population, so
much animal food and fat is consumed
and none where less is needed. The con-
SINNERS are not the Indians, who cannot
afford it, but the higher classes, who gen.
orally eat meat three times a day. Doubt
less the earlyfading beauty of aristocratic
lHericdndS, their over-corpulency, decayed
teeth and muddy skins, are the result of
injurious food and insufficient exercise :;
while the quantity of grease, chill and
sweetmeats consumed, in climate which
is naturally irritating and inflammatory,
helps 10 bring on those ruinous nervous
complaints that here are so general We
sometimes meet
EXTREMELY HANDSOME RANCHERITAs
The wives and daughters of farmers)-pos-
sibly riding on q mule behind the hired
man whose superb figures and teeth
like the SHOWS of Orizaba, are preserved till
long past middle age by constant exercise
which country-women must take perforce
whatever may be their natural Incidence
As class, thes. rancheritas are virtuous
industrious and in all respects superior to
the poems tserfs), because-though obliged
to labor unremittingly, often doing the
work of oxen in the feld-they are work
ing for themselves, instead of for master
who will monopolize the proceeds.
1t will be remembered that when Cortez
and the succeeding vice-kings began to re-
store the ruined city of Tenochtitlan-to
clear out the canals. repair the ancient
causewGys, and erect new city on the site
of the old-they forced the captive Indians
TO do all this labor. So cruel and con-
temptible was the avarice of the Spaniards
that they not only compelled the people
whom they had robbed to do all the man
uel labor of building homes for the usurp-
ers out of the ruins of their own, but thew
absolutely refused to furnish any food for
the victims. Therefore the wives and
daughters of these unfortunates (most of
whom had been reared in affluence. accord
ing to Arctic ideas.) were obliged toitill the
lands and earn food to sustain all who
labored for the vice-regal government, both
IN the city and the mines. The amount of
wealth thus accruing to the Viceroys and
Crown, and of suffering inflicted upon the
Indians by the mole than bar q Gus ty-
ranny of the conquerors, will never be
hHohh Ut ~ SUM al uu pdTdiltlSu extent
was the oppression carried that at last the
Pope was obliged to issue decree to the
effect that the conquered Azetecs were
really and truly men,
The eminent Able Clavigero, who re-
sided forty years in the provinces of
" New SPAIN" as the country was then
called, and wrote the history of Mexico at
that period, said of the
THIRTY MILLIONS OF CONQUERED AZTEcs
They are of good stature, generally ex-
ceeding middle size, well proportional in
all their limbs, good complexion, black
eyes, firm white teeth, thick glossy hair.
Their skin is of an olive color, and there
is scarcely nation on earth where there are
fewer deformed persons. 1t would be more
difficult to find a single hump backed,
lame or squint-eyed man or woman among
thousand Mexicans than among a hun
dred OF other nations. Among
the young women are many verv beautiful.
whose loneliness is rendered more winning
by the sweetness of their manners and
natural modesty The Europeans never
did less credit to their cwn reason than
when they doubted that of the Americans.
The state of civilization among the Next
cans when they were first known to the
Spaniards was much superior TO that of the
SpaniardS themselves when they were first
known to the Phenicians, that OF the
Gauls when they were first known to The
Greeks, or that OF the Germans and Britons
when first known 10 the Romansn The
halo that surrounded the